Starting Over, Part 2
by Allison Littrell
Summary: A mother and son's musings on death and dying. Bosco angst ahead, y'all! Please R & R, and let me know how to do this "add chapters" thing. . .I haven't figured that out, yet. Thanks!


OK, I haven't figured out the "edit story, add chapters" part of this thing, yet. I tried adding this to Part 1, but I've never done this before and don't know what I'm doing. Please R & R, and anyone with advice on how to add chapters to existing work please let me know how to do this so I can add more chapters.  
  
Thanks in advance for reading, and for your help.  
  
Allison  
  
- -  
  
STARTING OVER-Part 2  
  
- -  
  
Within minutes after the doctor grimly told Angela Boscorelli of her probable prognosis, she started thinking she actually could feel the cancer spreading. She immediately tried to reach Maurice by phone but only could leave a message. She called the police station but apparently the message never reached him from the precinct, which was strange. She told herself that it must've been an oversight, a rare mistake, for an urgent message from an officer's mom to have been "lost".  
  
But then she saw her son when he appeared in her room that night, the day after she was admitted and only 20 minutes after he'd called. He must've run the whole way up to the hospital. He was out of breath and ashen. He hadn't shaved. He looked horrible and she told him so.  
  
She had meant to put away the Hospice pamphlets before her son reached her room, but right after she got off the phone she'd gotten nauseated and rested her head back against her pillow. She'd pushed the nurse call button but no one came. She pushed it again. A sullen nurse appeared 10 minutes later, listened to her patient's complaint, and came back with 25 mg of Phenergan, enough to quell nausea and knock a 200-pound man on his ass at the same time.  
  
That nurse had long ago learned the Floor Nurse Corollary: The more drugged- out the patient, the less they will ask of their nurse. So long as the patient's blood pressure didn't plummet and the Phenergan didn't cause her to break out or quit breathing, the standard dose would "work". She didn't have the doctor paged to remind him of the patient's size--her physician had ordered 25 mg, so that's what she got, even if she only weighed 95 pounds. It would knock her out and help her forget that she hadn't had a drink in days. And she was going to die, anyway.  
  
- -  
  
Angela had been asleep when her son arrived at her room that first night of the rest of Maurice Boscorelli's life. She was in a semi-private room, but the bed next to hers was empty for the night, at least. He walked in gingerly, hoping not to wake her. And then he'd found the pamphlets tossed aside on his mother's bedside table.  
  
When It's Cancer. Chemotherapy and Anemia. Living With Cancer. Compassionate Friends.  
  
Hospice.  
  
That last one had to be a mistake, he'd thought. It was someone grabbing all the cancer-related pamphlets from the waiting room. If you were using Hospice, you already were doomed. You weren't a candidate for chemo. You weren't on any transplant list. You were on your way out, and they were there to help you check out comfortably as possible.  
  
Bosco's association with Hospice had been through all the "unattended" deaths that happened all over the city. These people elected to die at home, surrounded by family and those Hospice people who were there to ease suffering. Usually, the emaciated remains of these people had been full of cancer, or in end-stage liver failure or kidney failure or something of that nature.  
  
He and Faith had worked hundreds of these cases. She was much better at it than he was. Her empathy was genuine. They arrived on scene. They had to photograph the scene and ask tough questions and begin the process of arranging for coroners and mortuaries. These people wanted to die at home, surrounded by family and friends and not restricted by hospital red tape.  
  
He'd gotten better at dealing with the families left behind. Police had to wait around for the coroner or funeral home people to show up before they could leave the scene. Lately, he'd been able to look around the deceased's apartment and glean something from the possessions there. How did they live? Whom did they love? How'd they make a living? What did they like to do with themselves?  
  
Pictures on the wall were stories in their own right.  
  
"Hey, where'd he catch that huge fish?" Bosco would ask. "That thing's as big as the boat." Asking about framed, military service medals or collections of various knickknacks were other conversation starters. Anything distinctive caught Bosco's eye and became an icebreaker in a room otherwise fraught with tension. There were a few times he wished he'd known the person who just died. Within minutes he'd get the "tour," and that seemed to make things more comfortable for the family, to have an opportunity to reminisce.  
  
There was a guy who died not too long ago who'd been a regular for EMS. They made him all the time because he was an "old lunger" who'd smoked all his life and had wound up with bad emphysema and clogged arteries. His neighbor had found him after he didn't show up at the coffee shop for breakfast. This time, it was his time. And he'd died on the toilet. He was still there, rigored in place with his pants around his ankles.  
  
Doc had explained it all to Bosco and Faith that when people strained on the toilet or coughed or stood up or bent over, it depressed the vagal nerve and caused their heart rate to drop. It was a physiological thing that most people tolerated well. But people who were sensitive to slow heart rates did not tolerate it well, and when it happened they either fainted or died. Surviving victims of vagal tone usually wound up on pacemakers, cardiac medications or on stool softeners so they didn't have to strain while shitting. No one had found any medications of that nature in his apartment and he didn't have a pacemaker, so probably the vagal sensitivity had been undiagnosed until it killed the guy.  
  
"We call them 'commode codes'," Doc had said.  
  
Bosco remembered the wall hangings in his apartment, so apropos for this guy. There were no cheesy, cheery poems or cherubs or kittens or placid pond scenes or anything like that. The sign in his bathroom read, "When I grow up, I want to be an old fart." Despite himself, he'd chuckled a bit until Faith gently tapped him on the ribs with her MagLite. The coroner showed up and signed their paperwork, and out went 55 David to their waiting patrol car.  
  
"Bosco," Faith had said as the car pulled away from the apartment building. "Promise me something."  
  
"Yeah, what?"  
  
"You have to promise me that as my partner you'll take care of me if I die on the toilet," she'd said, and she'd even kept a straight face. "If I die on the toilet, please promise me you'll pull my pants up and haul me out of the bathroom so no one will know that I died on the toilet."  
  
"Yeah, that'd be a shitty way to go."  
  
Despite herself, she'd laughed. He missed those times, now.  
  
He remembered the lady who died of cancer who had 6 kids and 27 grandkids and twice as many great-grandkids and most of them were in that apartment when she passed on. He and Faith had barely been able to squeeze through to do their job.  
  
He always told the family that he was sorry for their loss.  
  
It always had been so easy to say.  
  
But now, as he trudged back to his mother's room, he wanted to call every one of those families and apologize to them for not having any idea what the hell he was saying.  
  
And it suddenly wasn't funny, anymore. Soon, his mother would go home. She'd told him that she didn't want to die in this hospital, and he promised her that he'd take care of her.  
  
He wondered about that day. His mom was dying and she wasn't going to be surrounded by anything that defined her character except a bunch of empty liquor bottles and plastic dishes. She had a few pictures of her sons up on the wall, so at least the officers who showed up to take their pictures would have something familiar and strange to look at: future NYPD officer Maurice Boscorelli smiling for his second-grade picture, with one of his front teeth missing from the latest beating from his dad.  
  
- -  
  
Of course, there was no payphone Bosco could use from the patient care floor. He'd need to go downstairs to the main waiting rooms, and he didn't want to leave his mother's side for even a minute.  
  
He'd tried to sneak a cellphone call from a stairwell but got busted by a respiratory technician who was standing in a propped-open outside access door, so she could smoke. She'd said that cellphones screw up the EKG telemetry and other monitors. He had replied that was bullshit, that he had a digital phone and it shouldn't make any difference, but he put the phone away anyway. He was in no shape to fight with anyone, and especially didn't want to be tossed out of the hospital.  
  
And he was in no mood to argue with another hospital employee who reeked of cigarette smoke. That never made much sense to him, that medical personnel took nicotine breathing treatments despite spending their work days giving nebulized Combivent and suctioning lung loogies out of patients with emphysema or lung cancer.  
  
His mother was upstairs, finally asleep after the latest round of morphine took effect. He no longer cared how her cancer had started, from the drinking or the smoking or the lifestyle or genetics. Her doctor already had made the only diagnosis that mattered: She was going to die, from this, and soon.  
  
She had pancreatic cancer and several more, inoperable masses throughout her abdomen. The "curative" round of chemotherapy hadn't done anything to even stop the growth of the tumors, let alone shrink them. She had just finished the "life extension" phase of the chemo, and she'd lost so much weight from all of it. Her last scan wasn't promising, but they still were waiting for a couple more tests to come back, and then they would know.  
  
So far the cancer hadn't progressed to her lungs. For that Bosco was moderately thankful. He didn't want her to spend her last days struggling to breathe, with a cannula up her nose and round-the-clock breathing treatments. She already was in liver and kidney failure, her pasty, yellow skin already flaking off because her electrolytes were off.  
  
Bosco already knew her chances. Very few people survived pancreatic cancer, an insidious invader that took hold before it became symptomatic. By the time his mother lost her appetite and began throwing up blood, it already was too late.  
  
At least Ma's piece of shit boyfriend wasn't in the picture. As soon as Angela Boscorelli received her diagnosis, he'd packed his stuff and some of hers, and had left their apartment. Bosco was glad to see him go. Angela was too busy puking her life away from her first round of chemotherapy to even care whether anyone was with her, or not.  
  
- -  
  
At first, Angela had thought she just had the flu. She hadn't been hungry, at all. She still drank as much as she always did, and thought her decline was the liquor finally catching up with her. At first, she didn't care. She'd rather be drunk than feel anything.  
  
Now she felt scared, and nauseated, and literally full of cancer.  
  
She had been hospitalized for more than a month, by now. Her latest round of tests were supposed to come back today, and then she'd know if there were any hope of beating this. At first, nurses gave her thiamine shots to avert DTs, and now she was getting them to keep her from wasting away any further than she had. Cancer was the worst kind of weight loss plan. She'd had a shot of morphine an hour ago. But nothing made her forget the invader that was snaking throughout her insides.  
  
She had been moved to a different floor of the hospital, the skilled nursing unit. The nurses here seemed friendlier than the burned-out crew on the med-surg floor. Her first three days in the hospital hadn't been very pleasant. But after her son arrived, he'd gotten that taken care of. He arranged for her to be moved as soon as possible, even offering to pay the hospital out of his own pocket to make up for any additional cost.  
  
Maurice had been wonderful, hardly leaving her side, sneaking in the occasional Hershey's bar for her. He'd worked the first week after her diagnosis, but finally told his lieutenant what was going on, and he was immediately placed on emergency leave so he could be with his mother. She thought at first that it was strange, how he stayed with her and hardly talked about his work, at all. He used to never shut up about it, and now she had to pry it out of him. He wasn't being too specific, only to say that Faith Yokas was getting better and already had been released to continue her recovery at home.  
  
Angela suspected that Maurice and his longtime partner Faith had been on the outs, and he'd mentioned to her before all this happened that he was working Anti-Crime now, with a different partner. She asked him yesterday- again-how his work was going, and he just shrugged his shoulders.  
  
He didn't tell her that he no longer cared about his work, his job, anything but his Ma. Even on his last day of work before emergency leave, his fellow officers had shunned him. They barely spoke to him unless they absolutely had to. His other family had cast him out, and he knew it was festering out of control now that he was "out of the office" on emergency leave.  
  
- -  
  
When Bosco arrived in the lobby, he went to the now-familiar bank of phones and tried Faith's phone number at home again. Busy. Probably Emily on the phone gabbing with someone about the kind of stuff important to teenagers before reality hits.  
  
He hadn't spoken to Faith since that bittersweet evening when he'd successfully gotten her off the hook for the hotel shooting. She'd told him to go away. He'd tried several times since then to call her apartment, but figured they must have caller ID because no one answered when the phone rang. When it was busy, it was busy for hours. He had no idea what was happening, and no matter how much he cared about Faith, his focus was on his mother.  
  
Bosco wasn't certain whether Faith knew about his mom. He suspected she didn't care. She had her own issues to handle. He also had no idea where his younger brother was. The only phone number his mother had for him was now disconnected. He'd left notes on bulletin boards and telephone poles for Mikey Boscorelli to call Maurice ASAP, Ma's sick.  
  
He had never called. Bosco started wondering if he was dead. He went to all of Mikey's old hangouts, but no one would tell him anything. He told them to pass it on, that Mikey's mother was at St. Vincent's with cancer. Still nothing.  
  
Bosco couldn't bring himself to hang up more posters, because that would have forced him to write the words, "Ma's dying." The whole dying thing was getting to him.  
  
- -  
  
Bosco was thinking about a bad one. The one "death at home" call that got to him was the same one that really got to Faith-the kid who died at home several years after sustaining a hypoxic brain injury and near-total paralysis in a diving accident.  
  
After doctors did what they could do for him and told his distraught parents that he should be moved to an institution, his parents instead moved him into their apartment. His parents and home health nurses had done the best they could for him over the past 3 years but now he had gotten pneumonia for the umpteenth time. Pneumonia was as common for quadriplegics as colds were to schoolkids. But this bout was lethal: His fever was 107 degrees, he had virtually no blood pressure and his face had begun swelling up.  
  
The family had Hospice come in when it was evident that death was near. The dad and the Hospice lady had explained all of this to Bosco while Faith went into the master bedroom to photograph what remained of the boy. The family had their son's DNR form on the entry table. The kid was 12 years old when he died and weighed only 37 pounds.  
  
Bosco was listening to all of this and trying to remain impassive, thinking of all the times he'd been headslammed into the pavement in his neighborhood every time he got beaten up for his lunch money. He was tempted to think 'there but for the grace of God', but knew that no god would wish this on anyone. The Polaroid flash ricocheted from inside the bedroom while Bosco wrote down information for his report. Faith was taking pictures and trying to console the kid's mother.  
  
When their job on scene was done, they had left together in complete silence, down the three flights of stairs and out onto the street. Before they went on this job, they'd spent most of the morning bickering at each other over everything and nothing. Bosco recalled it all had seemed so stupid, but they were both too stubborn to give in to each other, so they fought, instead.  
  
Bosco remembered pulling away from the apartment complex and heading south, toward the World Trade towers he'd thought at the time would always be there. Faith was sitting in the passenger seat, with tears brimming in her eyes.  
  
"You know, he was their only child," she said, scrubbing ineffectively at her eyes with her fingertips and finally dug into her purse for a Kleenex. Bosco was trying not to look at her because he had a lump in his own throat and he didn't want to lose his cool in front of Faith.  
  
"He died in his mother's arms," she continued. "She got into that bed and held him while he took his last breath."  
  
"Yeah, that's what the dad told me, too," Bosco said.  
  
"He was Charlie's age when he got paralyzed. He was diving in the deep end, but the shallow end sloped up too quickly and he hit his head on the bottom. He was over at a friend's house."  
  
Bosco found a sidestreet and pulled the car over, No Parking zone to be damned. He hadn't put them back into service, yet, and he wasn't going to.  
  
She had been digging into her purse again. "Oh God, the cap came off my Visine-that's just terrific! It feels like everything else is dry, though. It must've happened awhile ago."  
  
Bosco slipped one hand inside his uniform jacket pocket, and handed her the half-full bottle of Visine that he had.  
  
"Thanks," she said. "I didn't know you carried this stuff."  
  
"It's the allergy stuff, but it works the same," he replied.  
  
"I figured I drove you to tears and you just weren't telling me," she remarked, glancing at him. He grinned back at her.  
  
"Nah, not yet," he said. "You gonna be all right?"  
  
"Yeah," she replied. "Yeah, we can go back in service. Thanks for stopping over."  
  
"Not a problem."  
  
"I just want to go home and hug my kids."  
  
"Couple more hours, you'll get to."  
  
He missed her.  
  
Bosco was overcome with an urge to call the Yokas apartment not to talk with Faith or Fred, but to talk with their kids. He wanted to tell them that regardless of how things seemed now, they wouldn't have their mom and dad forever and to cherish those times while they had them. He never did make the call, certain the kids wouldn't understand and might even get mad at him for lecturing them. Right now, the death of a parent seemed forever away to Emily and Charlie.  
  
For Bosco, it would be a matter of hours.  
  
END OF PART TWO. . .  
  
- -  
  
OK, I sort of got carried away on the medical stuff. Thanks for the feedback on Part 1-keep it coming!  
  
Credit given where credit's due: The 'old fart' quote is from "When I Grow Up", a song by John McCutcheon on his latest CD, "The Greatest Story Never Told".  
  
Thanks again-  
  
Allison. 


End file.
